(satire) *New Federal Law Mandates Women Talk With Baby Voice.*

It is not easy to convict a UK thug of manslaughter, let alone murder. But the current right-wing government plans to create more obstacles to make sure they won't be convicted.

In addition, it will declare the accused thug's identity a secret.

Democratic Party supporters have mostly condemned Senator Schumer for surrendering to the Republican threat to temporarily shut down the government (by not extending the debt limit) if Democrats didn't agree to the ransom the Republican demanded, which consisted of permanent harmful changes in laws.

Since Republicans are trying to permanently destroy important parts of the government, it makes no sense to respond by approving that damage to avoid lesser damage. Make the Republicans eat the shutdown!

I've suspected for years that part of the reason Schumer leads the Democratic Party is rich people's campaign support for various Democratic elected officials. But I can't cite any proof of that.

However, Schumer said something that I think we should investigate: he said that Republicans would be able to use a temporary shutdown to destroy parts of the government. Before dismissing that as ridiculous, I'd like to see exactly hat he was referring to. It could conceivably be true: the shutdown could conceivably enable them to do other kinds of destruction with their Disgusting and Outrageous Government Evisceration.

I would not take Schumer's word for that, but it may be true, so we should listen to what he means. The Project 2025 planners planned their destruction carefully.

*Glacier meltdown risks food and water supply of 2bn people, says UN. Two-thirds of all irrigated agriculture in the world is likely to be affected in some way by receding glaciers and dwindling snowfall in mountain regions,*

Robert Reich on the illegal firing of the FTC commissioners.

*Judge blocks Elon Musk's gang from accessing social security records* with a temporary court order. I think this means that the legality of its access to those records is still undecided, but the order aims to prevent permanent harm from occurring before that final decision.

*DEA Insiders Warned About Legality of Phone Tracking Program. Their Concerns Were Kept Secret.*

This surveillance program, which still continues, tracks cell phone locations and who calls whom. It can track any cell phone the DEA wants to track.

Israel has ended the temporary cease-fie in Gaza, resuming the bombardment and siege. Once again Palestinians are told to flee to "safe" areas. In the past, those "safe" areas were not always really safe.

One difference is that, where Biden tried to avoid talking about the military support for Israel's atrocities, the wrecker treats the carnage as legitimate.

*Israeli protesters say airstrikes are "cover" for Benjamin Netanyahu to keep power.*

Morally, that criticism is too weak to do justice to Netanyahu's campaign of death. But it will help make the world aware that he is ready to kill for mere advantage.

The president has no authority over the US Institute of Peace, and no authority to change its board or executives, but his henchmen claim to have done so and took over its building with the help of thugs.

*US Institute of Peace sues Trump administration to block Doge takeover.*

*Ben & Jerry’s claims Unilever ousted its CEO for his progressive stance.*

When I read this, I checked to see if it were fro The Onion. No such luck — it is a factual article.

"William Boot":

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Nearly two months after a historically unprecedented coup by junta forces loyal to South African oligarch Elon Musk, the United States -- a long-proud and envy-of-the-world democracy -- stands increasingly unrecognizable, seeming to slip day-by-day away from its constitutional tradition and toward an oligarchic mafia state governed only by the personal whims of Musk and the country's elected president, Donald Trump.

This week was marked by stunningly brazen, unquestionably illegal, and unconstitutional assaults on the nation's historic traditions of due process and free speech -- as well as at least one armed standoff inside the capital -- as Musk's forces expanded control of government agencies and Trump extended his extortionate crackdown on independent institutions accused of regime thoughtcrimes.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

Dear Lazyweb,

Our beloved Ribley has suffered some major head injuries over the years, and so I'd like to replace the skull. Where can I get one?

Home Depot sells a replacement "scary skull" but that one sucks, I want the original. eBay has plenty of people parting out their skeletons, and while you can get femurs and rib cages, I haven't been able to find a head. (I believe "servo skull" is not compatible.)

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

After being held for "25 hours without sleep," Gibbs was finally released.

"Although not being something I'd want to replicate, it was actually an educational experience," Gibbs concluded. "I'm kind of proud of myself for being thrown out of America at the age of 67, now knowing that my relationship with that country is over for the foreseeable future."

Previously.

Last night as I was riding home I passed a Swasticar, and dutifully flipped it off. Turns out there was no one inside, but as soon as I raised my middle finger in salute, the car flashed a white light at me. I would be absolutely unsurprised to learn that Apartheid Emerald Mine Space Karen has assigned one of his Big Balls Doge Brownshirts to roll out a software update to collect a nationwide database of everyone who flips off his Incel Camino. Awww. My vote has been tallied. Surely this will be classed as terrorism some day, probably by the end of the month.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, which club on Eleventh Street would make the choice of allowing this rolling panoptic monument to white supremacy, apartheid and fascism to park right in front of their front door all night? The answer is "Yolo".

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

An Update Regarding the 2025 Open Source Initiative Elections

I've explained in other posts that I ran for the 2025 Open Source Initative Board of Directors in the “Affiliate” district.

Voting closed on MON 2025-03-17 at 10:00 US/Pacific. One hour later, candidates were surprised to receive an email from OSI demanding that all candidates sign a Board agreement before results were posted. This was surprising because during mandatory orientation, candidates were told the opposite: that a Board agreement need not be signed until the Board formally appointed you as a Director (as the elections are only advisory &mdash: OSI's Board need not follow election results in any event. It was also surprising because the deadline was a mere 47 hours later (WED 2025-03-19 at 10:00 US/Pacific).

Many of us candidates attempted to get clarification over the last 46 hours, but OSI has not communicated clear answers in response to those requests. Based on these unclear responses, the best we can surmise is that OSI intends to modify the ballots cast by Affiliates and Members to remove any candidate who misses this new deadline. We are loathe to assume the worst, but there's little choice given the confusing responses and surprising change in requirements and deadlines.

So, I decided to sign a Board Agreement with OSI. Here is the PDF that I just submitted to the OSI. I emailed it to OSI instead. OSI did recommend DocuSign, but I refuse to use proprietary software for my FOSS volunteer work on moral and ethical grounds⁰ (see my two keynotes (FOSDEM 2019, FOSDEM 2020) (co-presented with Karen Sandler) on this subject for more info on that).

My running mate on the Shared Platform for OSI Reform, Richard Fontana, also signed a Board Agreement with OSI before the deadline as well.

---

⁰ Chad Whitacre has made unfair criticism of my refusal tog use Docusign as part of the (apparently ongoing?) 2025 OSI Board election political campaign. I respond to his comment here in this footnote (& further discussion is welcome using the fediverse, AGPLv3-powered comment feature of my blog). I've put it in this footnote because Chad is not actually raising an issue about this blog post's primary content, but instead attempting to reopen the debate about Item 4 in the Shared Platform for OSI Reform. My response follows:

In addition to the two keynotes mentioned above, I propose these analogies that really are apt to this situation:

• Imagine if the Board of The Nature Conservancy told Directors they would be required, if elected, to use a car service to attend Board meetings. It's easier, they argue, if everyone uses the same service and that way, we know you're on your way, and we pay a group rate anyway. Some candidates for open Board seats retort that's not environmentally sound, and insist — not even that other Board members must stop using the car service &mdash: but just that Directors who chose should be allowed to simply take public transit to the Board meeting — even though it might make them about five minutes late to the meeting. Are these Director candidates engaged in “passive-aggressive politicking”?
• Imagine if the Board of Friends of Trees made a decision that all paperwork for the organization be printed on non-recycled paper made from freshly cut tree wood pulp. That paper is easier to move around, they say — and it's easier to read what's printed because of its quality. Some candidates for open Board seats run on a platform that says Board members should be allowed to get their print-outs on 100% post-consumer recycled paper for Board meetings. These candidates don't insist that other Board members use the same paper, so, if these new Directors are seated, this will create extra work for staff because now they have to do two sets of print-outs to prep for Board meetings, and refill the machine with different paper in-between. Are these new Director candidates, when they speak up about why this position is important to them as a moral issue, a “a distracting waste of time”?
• Imagine if the Board of the APSCA made the decision that Directors must work through lunch, and the majority of the Directors vote that they'll get delivery from a restaurant that serves no vegan food whatsoever. Is it reasonable for this to be a non-negotiable requirement — such that the other Directors must work through lunch and just stay hungry? Or should they add a second restaurant option for the minority? After all, the ASPCA condemns animal cruelty but doesn't go so far as to demand that everyone also be a vegan. Would the meat-eating directors then say something like “opposing cruelty to animals could be so much more than merely being vegan” to these other Directors?

Every change they make is worse than the one before.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

An Update Regarding the 2025 Open Source Initiative Elections

I've explained in other posts that I ran for the 2025 Open Source Initative Board of Directors in the “Affiliate” district.

Voting closed on Monday 2025-03-17 at 10:00 US/Pacific. One hour after that, I and at least three other candidates received the following email:

Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2025 11:01:22 -0700
From: OSI Elections team <elections@opensource.org>
To: Bradley Kuhn <bkuhn@ebb.org>
Subject: TIME SENSITIVE: sign OSI board agreement
Message-ID: <civicrm_67d86372f1bb30.98322993@opensource.org>

Thanks for participating in the OSI community polls which are now closed. Your name was proposed by community members as a candidate for the OSI board of directors. Functioning of the board of directors is critically dependent on all the directors committing to collaborative practices.

For your name to be considered by the board as we compute and review the outcomes of the polls,you must sign the board agreement before Wednesday March 19, 2025 at 1700 UTC (check times in your timezone). You’ll receive another email with the link to the agreement.

TIME SENSITIVE AND IMPORTANT: this is a hard deadline.

Please return the signed agreement asap, don’t wait. 

Thanks

OSI Elections team

(The link email did arrived too, with a link to a proprietary service called DocuSign. Fontana downloaded the PDF out of DocuSign and it appears to match the document found here. This document includes a clause that Fontana and I explicitly indicated in our OSI Reform Platform should be rewritten. )

All the (non-incumbent) candidates are surprised by this. OSI told us during the mandatory orientation meetings (on WED 2025-02-19 & again on TUE 2025-02-25) that the Board Agreement needed to be signed only by the election winners who were seated as Directors. No one mentioned (before or after the election) that all candidates, regardless of whether they won or lost, needed to sign the agreement. I've also served o many other 501(c)(3) Boards, and I've never before been asked to sign anything official for service until I was formally offered the seat.

Can someone more familiar with the OSI election process explain this? Specifically, why are all candidates (even those who lose) required to sign the Board Agreement before election results are published? Can folks who ran before confirm for us that this seems to vary from procedures in past years? Please reply on the fediverse thread if you have information. Richard Fontana also reached out to OSI on their discussion board on the same matter.

I mean into big papercraft. Like ten feet tall. I built this Recognizer for our TRON party this Sunday:

Originally it was going to be just for that event, but then it turned out so awesome that I decided to leave it up for all of GDC Week -- it's on topic!

Now the question remains whether anyone will recognize the Recognizer, because I have a theory and it it this: that 98% of the people attending the Game Developers Conference have never seen TRON. Maybe they can rectify that this Sunday.

(But probably not, because I'm told that the GDC crowd all high-tail it out of town on Thursday, which I just don't understand. Your company paid for a flight and a hotel for a week, and you're not gonna move your return flight and stay for the weekend to see stuff? The allure of return-to-office is that strong? Ok...)

It took me about a day to build it, and then another day of painting and taping. Oh, Jared and I also made some sweet DNA-branded lightcycle statues for prizes in the costume contest.

Anyway, you jerks better appreciate all this effort, and actually show up! Presales are low.